RAPID Hand: Robust, Affordable, Perception-Integrated, Dexterous Manipulation Platform for Embodied Intelligence

This paper addresses the scarcity of low-cost but high-dexterity platforms for collecting real-world multi-fingered robot manipulation data towards generalist robot autonomy. To achieve it, we propose the RAPID Hand, a co-optimized hardware and software platform where the compact 20-DoF hand, robust whole-hand perception, and high-DoF teleoperation interface are jointly designed. Specifically, RAPID Hand adopts a compact and practical hand ontology and a hardware-level perception framework that stably integrates wrist-mounted vision, fingertip tactile sensing, and proprioception with sub-7 ms latency and spatial alignment. Collecting high-quality demonstrations on high-DoF hands is challenging, as existing teleoperation methods struggle with precision and stability on complex multi-fingered systems. We address this by co-optimizing hand design, perception integration, and teleoperation interface through a universal actuation scheme, custom perception electronics, and two retargeting constraints. We evaluate the platform’s hardware, perception, and teleoperation interface. Training a diffusion policy on collected data shows superior performance over prior works, validating the system’s capability for reliable, high-quality data collection. The platform is constructed from low-cost and off-the-shelf components and will be made public to ensure reproducibility and ease of adoption.

Authors

• Zhaoliang Wan
• Zetong Bi
• Zida Zhou
• Hao Ren Sichuan University
• Yiming Zeng
• Yihan Li
• Lu Qi Wuhan University
• Xu Yang
• Ming-Hsuan Yang University of California at Merced
• Hui Cheng UM-SJTU Joint Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

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